of course cds are patently too small. DVDs are better, but barely. So you have to swap in and out, you have to catalog, you have to waste time burning. 120 Jiggerbytes in one place is a lot more convenient of course, but now convenient is also affordable

for mass data storage, how much longer will cds and/or dvds make sense?

in less than 10 years HDs have gone from $1 per MB to $1 per Jiggerbyte, that's a 1000-fold improvement!

If they maintain anywhere near this pace, in five years HDs will completely blow DVDs out of the water

> Also it is a lot easier to back-up 650 mig on a CDR than it is to backup a 120 Jiggerbytes of hard-drive

no, that's the point, the harddrive IS the backup!

Remember how they used to use tape to backup stuff? No one uses tape any more because HDs (and CDs admittedly) blew tape out of the water. HDs have kept on progressing and soon they will obsolete DVDs (for backup/storage purposes).

When HDs were expensive and CDs were cheap it made sense to backup HD to CD. Now that HDs are cheap, it makes more sense to just back it up to another HD

So when you get a powercut while you are backing your Hard-drive up to your Jiggerbye (Whatever that means) and this causes both drives to go down for some reason and they both end up unusable what do you I do then ? Because if I use your way of doing things I cannot use my Back-up CD's as I have not backed-up anything on to them All I can do is get another Hard-drive and new a Jiggerbyte and hope it dosen't happen again then spend hours Re-installing my OS and programs and typing all the accounts in from scratch ! That is really good advice you are giving.

By the way do you work for one of the Hard-drive manufacturers that are they having finacial problems because they have had to drop their prices to a realistic price and can no long live in their Mansions because of lost sales owing to the increased use of CDRW and DVD drives !

> So when you get a powercut while you are backing your Hard-drive up to your Jiggerbye (Whatever that means) and this causes both drives to go down for some reason and they both end up unusable what do you I do then ?

The same thing you would do if you were burning a cd and you get a powercut . . .

i don't think you realize i'm talking about REMOVABLE hard drives. Instead of buying a rack of 2000 CDRs you would have a case with say 3 hard drives. Time for the weekly backup? stick one in and copy away

their inherent rewritability is handy too

i mean damn, how do you backup a 200 JB HD? Who wants to mess with that many CDs or even DVDs? The only practical solution will be another HD

I still agree very much with JOHN he said "For sure it makes sense since people always need a method to store data. CD/DVD offers storage solutions which cannot be replaced with traditional HD..."

For instance how do normal people back-up their legally owned Programs (Including Games ) easily when they have no CD Writer? And when they damage the original how do they replace it without a Backed-up CD as stand by?

What you are saying only really applies to Companies not to ordinary People. But how many companies will want to upgrade anyway, most companies are set in there ways and are very suspicous about new Technology. I still deal with a lot of Companies that still use Windows 3.1 and Dos and as long it works for them they think it is a waste of time and money to upgrade ?

I mean come on! Speaking of portable storage the SyJet 1.5 gig portable drives have been around for a lot of years and the Company who made them SyQuest got out of it just as the CD Writer was starting to boom and Iomega took them over! And do you think for one minute that a company like Iomega one of the biggest portable storage Manufacturer in the world would have started making CD Writers if they themselves thought it was going to go belly up, I think not, they were thinking rightly that the CD Writers were going to take over as back-up devices and they were right and I am sure it will stay that way for a long time choose what new technology comes out !

> For instance how do normal people back-up their legally owned Programs (Including Games ) easily when they have no CD Writer?

as a matter of fact that was the ONLY use i could come up with for cdwriters in the future. Maybe making some cds for your car. Other than that, nothing.

I'm not saying they're going to disappear, i mean most machines still ship with floppy drives. On the other hand it's safe to say the era of the floppy is over and no one uses them to backup their harddrive.

Similarly, cdrecorders will soon be relegated to a NICHE market of people who 'backup' their 'legal' games.

as long as software is distributed via cds and is locked to cds, there will be a market for burners. But you can see the movement to more electronic distribution and tying software to the machine instead of the CD

basically it's all downhill from here for the cdrecorder market (although you won't see a steep dropoff for probably another 3 years)

the only thing that can save the industry is if they come out with a 1 Terabyte optical disk and soon . . .

You Say " I'm not saying they're going to disappear, i mean most machines still ship with floppy drives. On the other hand it's safe to say the era of the floppy is over and no one uses them to backup their harddrive."

Wrong again ! The best Hard-drive backup program at the momment Norton Ghost 2002 uses floppy disks more than any other Media to run the Back-up program more than any other Media even if you save the Norton Images to your Hard-drive! And also some CDRW drives and Video Cards they will only let you upgrade their firmware if you run it in dos. And how are you going to do that in Windows XP without a floppy drive and a boot disk ? And don't say A Boot CD as you have already said they are finished !

You Say " as long as software is distributed via cds and is locked to cds, there will be a market for burners. But you can see the movement to more electronic distribution and tying software to the machine instead of the CD

Programs will be purchessed and installed via the CD for a long time to come well past both your's and mine sell buy date. But what other media are you suggesting " That every time we want a new program we buy either a new computer or new hard-drive with it already installed " Dell and Maxtor will love you to join their Advertising Team " !

You say " basically it's all downhill from here for the cdrecorder market (although you won't see a steep dropoff for probably another 3 years)"

With you saying this it makes me wonder if at some time you are going to mention a Brand Name for some new product that nobody is bothered about because it is a Flash in the pan ( Just like the StarForce CD protection System ) and no one is buying the crap so they are looking for free advertising ! And as for going down the Hill, that is total rubbish with the price of CDRW's dropping to an affordable price the market is booming and will be for a very long time if they keep their prices write ! And it will still boom untill the CDRW Manufacturers reach a maximum speed but I would have thought by then they would have thought about adding extra features as Yamaha are doing now with their CRW-F1 and that I am sure will make it the most wanted CDRW and that is just by adding one litte new feature that nobody has ever done before and how many more little new features is there around the corner!

You say " the only thing that can save the industry is if they come out with a 1 Terabyte optical disk and soon "

Which industry are we taking about certainly not the CDRW industry they are making and selling more units than they ever have and it will continue like this for a long time ! Is this where your new product gets a free plug on your next post!

> Wrong again ! The best Hard-drive backup program at the momment Norton Ghost 2002 uses floppy disks more than any other Media to run the Back-up program

i would say using a media solely for booting to run disk imaging and bios flashing programs qualifies as NICHE

> And how are you going to do that in Windows XP without a floppy drive and a boot disk ?

imagine this: you have a removable hard drive bay that you can boot from with the press of a key

on this removable harddrive you have a dual-boot system: in partition 1 you have 'real dos' for flashing bios and whatnot. in partition 2 you have a full installation of XP with your disk imaging software (disks can be imaged under XP as long as they don't have any open files, which rules out the system partition for instance) and any other useful recovery utilities installed

anything a floppy or cd can do for booting a system, a removable harddrive could do better

> Programs will be purchessed and installed via the CD for a long time to come well past both your's and mine sell buy date

i don't disagree, however like i said, 'backing up' 'legitimate' software is a NICHE market.

> And as for going down the Hill, that is total rubbish with the price of CDRW's dropping to an affordable price the market is booming and will be for a very long time if they keep their prices write !

you are wrong. The market has boomed (past tense), now it is approaching its zenith. Soon (1 year) it will plateau, then it will gradually decline (2-3 years) then it will crash down to niche status

floppies and floppy drives are VERY cheap. Does anyone care? Will anyone care when cdrecorders approach similar prices? When was the last time you saw a competitive review of floppy drives?

> Which industry are we taking about certainly not the CDRW industry they are making and selling more units than they ever have and it will continue like this for a long time

i am talking about the cdrw industry. Yes they are making and selling more than they ever have, but it would be short-sighted to not see that the end is nigh

> Is this where your new product gets a free plug on your next post!

i have repeatedly said what i think the future is: removable hard drives. It appears that the only thing that can keep up with hard drives in terms of speed and capacity is . . . another hard drive. Anything a cd/floppy/dvd can do, a harddrive will do better, faster and cheaper (except for backing up copyprotected stuff and creating discs to play in your archaic dvd player, etc)

backing up a 200 Jiggerbyte hard drive will take 286 CDs or 41 DVDs. Sorry, that is just not practical

unless the industry can show they can keep up with harddrives (hence the need for a 1 TB optical disk NOW), their day in the sun will soon be over

Hey allyk You say " i would say using a media solely for booting to run disk imaging and bios flashing programs qualifies as NICHE " Well how else are you going to do it without a floppy drive !

And how are you going to do that in Windows XP without a floppy drive and a boot disk Buy a removable hard drive bay which when it goes down leaves you with nothing. Yeah that makes a lot of logic. I THINK NOT !

You Say " imagine this: you have a removable hard drive bay that you can boot from with the press of a key on this removable harddrive you have a dual-boot system: in partition 1 you have 'real dos' for flashing bios and whatnot. in partition 2 you have a full installation of XP with your disk imaging software (disks can be imaged under XP as long as they don't have any open files, which rules out the system partition for instance) and any other useful recovery utilities installed anything a floppy or cd can do for booting a system, a removable harddrive could do better

All of the stuff you mention here can be done on an ordinary Hard-drive with a floppy and a CDRW. So what is the point in changing a known good system to new technology which has known problems. So this is old hat it has already been done years ago and it failed then just like it will in the future.

You Say "anything a floppy or cd can do for booting a system, a removable harddrive could do better "

Yeah I agree with that ! For instance :- Crash better ! Loose files better ! Make you swear better ( When they constantly crash your system ). Learn you how the type better when you have lost all your accounts and have to type them all in again because you didn't back them up on CDRW. Need I go on !!!!!! I think not!!!

You Say " don't disagree, however like i said, 'backing up' 'legitimate' software is a NICHE market." It may be a NICHE market to you but not to the Millions of people who have bought programs and accidently damaged them and the have to wait for weeks to get them replaced and have to pay extra in the bargain !

You Say " you are wrong. The market has boomed (past tense), now it is approaching its zenith. Soon (1 year) it will plateau, then it will gradually decline (2-3 years) then it will crash down to niche status" Dream on my friend CD Writers are here to stay unlike new technolgy which which never see's the light of day! Ask Iomgea if they are going to stop making CDRW's they started making them in the first place because the knew CDRW are replacing Zip Drives !

You Say " floppies and floppy drives are VERY cheap. Does anyone care? Will anyone care when cdrecorders approach similar prices? When was the last time you saw a competitive review of floppy drives?

The simple reason why we don't see Reviews on floppies is because they have been overtaken by CDRW so most of the companies turned to making CDRW as their main product. But how many modern computers are sold without a floppy ? CDRW's are here to stay choose what you say Ask the peolpe who use this Forum (Which was it was intended for CDRW-INFO !) if they think the days of CDRW's are doomed !

Personally I would love to see what Burner1000000 thinks about your beliefs because I do believe that he is the one to tell you more than I can ! And to be quite honest you are boring me to death and I am dissapointed you have not given your product a plug it may have given your failing REMOVEABLE HARD-DRIVE company a lift ! ENOUGH SAID FINO

> HD are not so safe as supposed to be. A brand new Seagate 70GB U160 10.000rpm died without any obvious reason

so what's your point? i've had cdrs be bad and go bad for no apparent reason (or apparent reason like knocking a spindle-full off the table). They aren't as safe as supposed to be

in fact i've had more problems with bad CDRs than bad HDs. Of course maybe that's just me, but that's neither here nor there. The point is harddrives are reliable ENOUGH for the vast majority of people

> We lost some data, that if properly stored in CD/DVD-R media would be safe

and if it had been backed up to another HD it would be safe too

but the real issue is: why wasn't your data backed up in the first place! i would hazard that it is because cd burning and cataloging is too much of a hassle. If you used a HD to backup with, it would probably happen more regularly

> And how are you going to do that in Windows XP without a floppy drive and a boot disk Buy a removable hard drive bay which when it goes down leaves you with nothing

i don't follow. When what goes down? the bay? you could say the same thing about floppy drives. And floppy drives are FAR more unreliable than hard drives. maybe you mean the boot drive itself? well presumably you would have more than one (kind of like floppies) and presumably you could borrow one from a friend and presumably you would know it was going bad before disaster struck. I don't see how it is any worse than relying on the amazingly unreliable floppy

> All of the stuff you mention here can be done on an ordinary Hard-drive with a floppy and a CDRW

a. NO (try booting xp from a cd, good luck) b. so what? i said removable harddrives could replace them because they are easier, faster, bigger, etc. What advantage does a floppy/cdrw combo have over a HD? c. NO again. Try copying data off a failing harddrive to your cdrw that you booted XP from. Might have a wee bit of a problem

> Crash better ! > Loose files better !

i don't see why a harddrive would be particularly prone to those problems. In fact i would trust one more that i would a cdr

> Ask Iomgea if they are going to stop making CDRW's they started making them in the first place because the knew CDRW are replacing Zip Drives !

i'm not sure what your fascination with iomega is. They moved on to cdrw when they saw the market for zip and jazz shrivel up and die. I'm sure they'll move on to something else when they see the market for cdrw shrivel up and die

> The simple reason why we don't see Reviews on floppies is because they have been overtaken by CDRW so most of the companies turned to making CDRW as their main product

and the same will happen to cdrw as harddrives take them over

ok, i've done enough defending the hd approach. Now i would like your opinion of the best way to backup a 200JB HD

however the price/capacity ratio is rapidly improving. In 4 years it could easily be $0.10/JB (assuming HDs maintain current pace of doubling capacity every 12 months)

whatever the reliability issues, as HDs soar towards a terabyte, i don't forsee any other manageable system. Tape is out, DVDs will be WAY too small, CDs will be WAY WAY WAY too small, solid state isn't even beginning to approach the same ballpark, MO drives haven't been competitive in nearly 10 years. How high would a stack of a million floppies be?